Saturday, September 22, 2012

This afternoon, Peeper and I made a little trip down to the town where I worked when I was pregnant with her, to see a puppet show.

This place was really cool. It's a little puppet theatre that has shows every weekend. They do the same show for several weeks, and decorate the whole place to go along with the theme of the show. There are also several puppets of various types that the kids can play with.

This season's show is The Frog Prince. Here's Peeper posing with the puppeteer and some of the "cast."

We very much enjoyed the show, except for a couple of things.

Through the whole show, the princess was a real brat and very rude to the frog, which is pretty much how the story goes. At the beginning of the story, she has promised - with absolutely no intent to follow-through - to let him eat from her plate, to let sleep at the foot of the bed, and to give him a kiss.

After giving in on the first two points, she refuses to kiss him. A big "chase scene" ensues, with music, and near misses, and puppets popping in and out of various parts of the set. Then he catches her and holds her down and kisses her. Because, after all, she did promise.

Then he turns into the prince, and suddenly, of course, she's interested.

Being the spoiled brat that she is, she asks where her gift is, because "Princes always bring princesses gifts. Where is the gift that I deserve?"

The frog/prince then says, "Oh, I'll give you what you deserve, all right. A big spanking!"

He turns her over his knee and spanks her. And then they get engaged.

I'm sorry, what?

At risk of being a humorless lesbian, is this really the best lesson to be teaching our children? Especially our daughters?!?

If you indicated that you might be interested in kissing a boy, you're not allowed to change your mind.

If you do change your mind - or if you never wanted to kiss him in the first place - it's okay for him to chase you down and force you to kiss him.

Once he forces you to kiss him, you will realize what a prince he was all along.

And then he should hit you, to punish you for not wanting to kiss him.

And then you should marry him.

What the fuck?

Looking around the audience, I could tell that I wasn't the only parent there who was surprised, to say the least, by the spanking plot twist.

I wonder if I'm the only one whose child has been talking about "a big spanking!" every since. Or who's since been hit by their child, and told that they were getting "a big spanking."

Peeper and I have talked about this quite a bit today, and I've made it clear that "Mama didn't like the spanking part."

She told me "I liked it," so I asked "Why did you like it?"

"Because you don't like it."

Sigh.

I also wonder if I'm the only one who is considering sending them an email about it, before we consider returning for The Nutty Nutcracker in December.